


rejoined

by ninemoons42



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gen, Han Solo Lives, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8460253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: In the aftermath of Starkiller Base and all the problems brought on by the First Order, Luke Skywalker is persuaded to come home to the two who have been waiting patiently for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [culturevulture73](https://archiveofourown.org/users/culturevulture73/gifts).



Hand over hand, he thought, as he struggled towards full waking, as he struggled back towards the Force -- but he did not reach for the distance that it normally provided between him and the pain of his injuries, not this time. He didn’t need that distance; he needed the exact opposite of it. He needed to feel the pain that was radiating from his hand and from his feet. He needed to feel that pain so that he could know that his limbs were all right -- the ones that he still had and wished to keep.

Pins and needles, prickling and prickling and quickly intensifying. It was more than enough to make him wince, more than enough to make him grit his teeth, but he needed to _feel_ and he would gladly bear the pain over and over again.

Now he opened his eyes -- why was that so difficult, he wondered, why did he feel like there were rocks pinning him down everywhere -- and he could see his hand and he could see his feet. One after the other, he touched his fingertips to his thumb. One after the other, he wiggled his toes. Sluggishly but eventually, his limbs obeyed him. 

His constructed hand, his hand of metallic servos and gears, seemed to still be in good working order. He’d have to check on the sensors soon, or tune them up again -- he’d almost had his lightsaber slip out of his grip on that last mission -- 

And now that he was most of the way to awake he could taste the familiar disgusting fuzz of lingering bacta, clinging to the back of his tongue, stuck in the crevices between his teeth. He swallowed and winced, swallowed again. He was going to need something to drink. Something to wash away the feeling of something having died in his mouth.

Nearby: a rumble of a stop-and-start hum. 

Luke knew that voice.

The struggle of a tiny blunt point being forced through sturdy, cracked, many-times-patched leather.

Luke sighed, but didn’t look over at the other man in the room. “Let me guess, you don’t know where the sharp needles are, or someone in requisitions is unhappy with you, or -- I’m trying to think of all the reasons why you’re struggling to mend leather with a needle that’s not up to the task.”

A familiar chuckle in response, gravelly and warm, and by turns acerbic and amused. “The sewing kits are in the pilots’ bunks, and I think even you’ll agree with me when I say they need those needles more than I do. I’m managing just fine with the needle I’ve got.”

“Doesn’t feel that way from here,” Luke muttered, still staring at the cracks in the ceiling. “Tell me, how many stitches have you actually made, and how many times have you stuck yourself while making those stitches?”

“I suppose you’re all right, if you’re managing to make fun of me even in your condition,” Han said, but he seemed to be laughing softly even as he spoke. 

So Luke glanced over and -- there was that familiar tug in the Force, making him linger over a well-known lopsided smile. He was getting used now to the near-absence of black in Han’s hair, nearly as used to the silver in his own, and in Leia’s. 

The new seams and scars criss-crossing Han’s face, though, those were another matter entirely.

“Tell me about -- about Starkiller,” Luke said, reaching out.

And Han’s hand was warm around his, vital and rough. “I didn’t think I would survive,” was the quiet answer. “I made a mistake. Leia and I -- the three of us, you and me and her -- we made a mistake.”

Luke gritted his teeth, let the rage fly through him on its clawed and hooked wings, and then released it all into the Force. “He’s gone.”

“Ben is gone, yes, and he’s long since been gone if he was about ready to take my head off,” Han said, quiet and resigned. “Weren’t for Chewie’s bowcaster I wouldn’t be here to talk to you. Wouldn’t be here for her to yell at me -- ”

“Where is Leia?”

“Teaching, since you’re down for the count.” Han took his hand back, and Luke felt the loss keenly. “Actually, I’m up next on the training roster. Big Deal -- Finn -- I don’t know if you’ve met him yet, but he’s the former ’trooper we seem to have picked up -- he’s gifted, that one, he’s got a real talent for shooting things. Even Chewie’s impressed with how he handles the guns on the _Falcon_ , and you know how the big walking carpet’s only gone and seen everything in the galaxy.”

“Leia’s teaching Rey, and you’re teaching Finn, and -- what else is left for me to do?”

He got another lopsided smile in response. “Heal up. Then you can get back to work.”

“And that’s all the thanks I’m getting for what I’ve been doing.”

Han rounded on him, then, and Luke pressed himself back into the pillows for a moment out of sheer surprise. “You could’ve let us send someone with you. You could’ve drafted some other pilot to at least watch your back -- we wouldn’t have made a fuss, we’d have sent X-wings with you if you’d only _waited_. Luke, I know you can see how I’m getting old, or Leia for that matter -- well, the news is, you’re getting there, too. You’ve still got the Force on your side but don’t you think we haven’t noticed that you’re starting to slow down. We worry for you -- and I don’t just mean Leia an’ me. There is an entire Resistance worrying about the Jedi Master on their side. We need you up and about, we need you to do what you’re good at -- but could you _please_ listen to reason and quit harin’ off on your own?”

Before he could reply, Luke sensed footsteps coming their way, and another presence that was dear to him, that blazed with warmth and that inescapable sense of loss, that inescapable weight of command.

Leia, standing in the door, and only Luke and Han could ever see her with her shoulders stooped over, with the myriad of lines in her face.

Luke watched her come in, watched her draw Han into an embrace: and he could see the two of them now, bearing the unimaginable loss of their son -- but the Force also told him that that wasn’t the only thing that had tied them back together after the long years of working towards the same ends, on separate paths. 

He was long past the point of envying them, truly. Despite the many fights, despite the separations -- they were always going to fall back into each other’s orbit, and they were always going to stand together. Loss and distance were nothing to Han and Leia -- they had weathered the Empire and the long years of war, and now they were weathering the First Order and these years of guerrilla actions, and there was truly nothing that would be able to tear them apart now.

Still, he was only too happy when the two of them turned back to him: the craggy lines in Han’s face softening, and the worn, _real_ sliver of Leia’s smile. He was only too happy to take their offered hands. 

“I’m not going to repeat what Han told you -- but I am going to be watching you very carefully,” Leia said as she took the chair that Han had vacated. “ _And_ I’ve enlisted everyone I can, from the pilots to the guidance teams to the ground crews. The moment I feel you doing something _odd_ with the Force, they’ll know, and they’ll do everything they can to make sure you don’t fly off all by yourself.”

“Chewie,” Han added.

Leia chuckled softly. “That goes without saying. He’s not concerned about breaking bones and things like that. He’ll sit on you, Luke, he said it before I could even ask.”

So he put both his hands up in defeat, despite the creak in his elbow and the twinge in his shoulders. “All right, all right, no need to rub it in. Backup on missions, and no more sneaking off.”

“You’ve said that before,” Han chuckled, going to lean on the wall next to the chair. “We know you. You’ll look contrite for now, but then something will happen. So we’re taking extra precautions.”

“Up to and including this,” and Luke blinked when Leia gestured at the item hanging from her belt.

The hilt of a lightsaber.

“When did you have time to build it?” he asked, after a moment of goggling. 

“Too many sleepless nights,” was the response, and Han squeezed her shoulder afterwards. “He helped me get some of the parts.”

“So -- teaching Rey,” Luke said.

“I don’t follow your code,” Leia said. “And I’d like to think I know a little about changing an approach for the being who happens to be in need of it. So I’ve got her working in the gardens. I told her to think of touching the plants and the soil as touching the Force, too. I understand that she’s having difficulties with accessing the Force at all times -- it only makes sense, as she’s been living on her own since she was very small. There’s a block of some kind there. She’ll need help breaking it down.”

“We’re still working on tracing her family,” Han said. “I haven’t suddenly turned into a slicer, but I still remember where Chewie and I’ve found all those little caches of hard-to-find information. We can still look for those archives that didn’t get completely burned, or we can try to reconstruct them.”

“Something to keep you here, and _grounded_ , for the time being,” Leia added.

Luke sighed, and smiled, and shook his head, even as he shifted around on the bed so he could sit, comfortably cross-legged. “You really want me around that much.”

Both Han and Leia snorted. 

“Get it through your thick bantha skull, all right: we need you alive, and not just in the sense of you have beings to teach or battles to fight or anything else that’s going through your head right now,” Han said, quiet and intense. “Leia and I, we’ve missed you, and we’re going to do a lot just to make sure you stay around with us.”

“That is, if you still want to be with us,” Leia said, and for a moment she wore Han’s lopsided smile. 

Again, the Force, whispering to Luke: of Han looking over his shoulder at empty seats in different ships, from the _Millennium Falcon_ to the _Eravana_ and all the others in between. Of Leia at a table in her quarters, with two extra places set but no one to eat with. A jacket that was criss-crossed with laser-burned welts, because its wearer was missing at least one other confederate. A lightsaber, taking shape slowly, in the dim deep seconds of countless late nights.

“I don’t understand,” Luke said, eventually, and it had been a long time since he’d last had to say those words.

“Not expecting you to,” was the almost cheerful answer from Han. “I don’t pretend to always understand her, or you, but here I am, trailing after the two of you anyhow. And now I’m going to choose to keep doing that, for as long as I can.”

“It’s simple, but it’s also quite complicated,” Leia said, with a brief press of her fingertips to his wrist. “We’d rather you stayed with us, instead of brooding by yourself. We’d rather you told us of your worries, and your fears, and your ideas. We’d rather have you around, and not just because you’re some kind of Jedi Master. Important as that is, it’s still not as important as _you_. Just you. Han and I, we’d like to have you.”

“Like we used to,” Han said. “The three of us, together.”

“Even after all this time?” Luke managed to ask.

“Especially after all this time,” Leia said.

Luke watched them join hands, and watched them offer their free hands to him.

Speechless, he nodded, and took what was offered.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] rejoined](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118346) by [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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